What is jingoistic about displaying a flag? Basically, if you show any respect for a flag or have one up, you are suddenly a jingoistic nationalist zealot? By appreciating the flag, you suddenly myopically lose sight of the fact that your nation isn’t perfect?
I get a different message from the whole flag thing. Europeans are bitter and disillusioned. Any form of pride or respect for the nation is viewed with suspicion or outright disgust (unless it comes up at a soccer game, in which case it’s fine). Anyone who disagrees is somehow a child for not “understanding.” Again, a bit like the joyless curmudgeon that starts to hate anyone that is happy.
Please. This is the exact type of condescending shit that Europeans have been engaging in for the last millennium and should be ashamed of. Someone has a different viewpoint, so they are suddenly immature and childish. Just like the Africans and Indians? Is it still the European burden to dominate the social and cultural system of other countries (including the U.S.) and rewrite what the backward heathens get wrong, such as flag worship?
Absolutely not! I’d say that Europe has a far more nuanced and individual approach to such things, and certainly does not consist of discreet homogenous groups. Take English vs. British, or Scottish religious divides, or Belgium, or Brittany, or the Basque country…we’re aware that it takes much more than a flag to define an identity of either an individual or a group.
Hyperbole won’t help your argument. And you’ve missed the point entirely. The ‘we know best’ attitude of colonialism (cf. Eddie Izzard’s 'cunning use of flags) is precisely what causes much of the ambivilence about being unquestioningly ‘proud’ of our country.
…well, maybe waving around silly little bits of cloth is preferable to fighting about those kinds of things for hundreds of years like Europeans do, hmmm?
[QUOTE=dangermomFor a European example, GorillaMan, head up to Denmark sometime and see how they treat their flag. It’s everywhere. Flags go on birthday cakes, in festoons across the streets in summer, and are strung over Christmas trees. You can hardly buy a birthday card without a flag on it, and little flags on wooden poles can be bought anywhere to put in your bedroom–I have two. The Danes aren’t exactly famous for their jingoism, are they?[/QUOTE]
The Dutch are similiar. The flags come out for “Koninginnendag”, when children graduate (they are then accompanied by a backpack) and of course anytime the Dutch football team has an important game. We aren’t exactly known for our jingoism either, but you do see a lot more flags than say in Germany.
That’s a weird thing to say. Before the first Protestant church, when the Catholics ruled the roost over Europe, there were Jewish ghettoes in every major commercial city in Europe. Who do you think the boys from the Spanish Inquisition were looking for? Even if you think all the Protestant churches are the same religion as the Catholic church because they’re all Christians, how can you say that the applies to people of the Jewish faith?
How are all Europeans one ethnicity? Because they’re all largely white? Is white an ethnic group now? Could be I suppose. I don’t tend to get the whole ethnicity thing, but then again, I live in a pretty white place, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask.
But tell me; does a Slav look like a Celt to you? Does a person from Scandinavian country look remotely like a Spaniard to you? They might, I suppose, but they certainly don’t to me.
Unless your definition of recent is far more stretchy than mine I can’t begin to see where you’re coming from with that.
There are many countries flags that make me think “hmmmm, I know those stripes are country A B or C and those colours mean country A B or C”.
There are very few flags known the world over. One would be the Union Jack, shit is in the corner of several flags, NZ included. Another would be the Swiss flag)(who doesn’t own, or know someeone who owns a Swiss army knife). Number one would be the American flag. As a logo it is as instantly recognisable as the golden arches.
Within European countries (both historical and present-day ones), there is and always has been all sorts of religious and ethnic divides. Why was it at times deemed necessary to enforce a particular religion? Through an (ultimately impossible) desire to enforce uniformity where it doesn’t exist.
It’s not hyperbole at all. It is insulting to presume that: 1) those who display flags or otherwise respect them are “unquestionably ‘proud’” of their country; and that 2) even if that were the case, that a patronizing and condescending attitude of “We’re enlightened, you’ll get there eventually” is at all acceptable.
That is the stereotypical snobbery and elitism that a lot of Americans think of when they think of Europeans.
Perhaps this is a source of European confusion over why Americans are different. We are not your younger sibling. At best we’re the odd cousins who couldn’t fit in and so we were driven out or left of our own free will. I hear a lot of criticism that Americans think everyone should be like them. Europeans need to stop being so bemused that we aren’t more like them. We like our flags, so what? Viva la difference.
In November 1991, the U.S. Congress and President Bush proclaimed November 16 as Dutch-American Heritage Day. November 16th was selected because on that day in 1776, Dutch forces on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius returned the salute of the American brig-of-war “Andrew Doria,” thereby making the Netherlands the first country to officially salute the flag of the newly-independent United States.
On Dutch-American Heritage Day we celebrate the ties and pay tribute to the mutual respect and friendship that animates the Dutch-American relationship.
I especially like the ‘mutual respect and friendship’ bit.
That’s what’s life is all about, isn’t it? MGibson, You have every right to like your flag, period.
I too have seen it many times. You can ask any Vietnam war refugee about coming to the US and most will tell you an American Dream story. A friend of mine was an illegal imigrant from Mexico, now owns his own successful business and lives the American Dream. Another friend whose family has been in the US for generations but was raised in an alcohol/drug ruined family, rose above it all to become a successful realtor and owes his life to the American Dream. These kinds of stories are repeated over and over again in every American city and town.
I agree with a lot of what has been said is wrong with the US; the religious zealotry, our current global aggressiveness, and the death penalty, but the American Dream dead? Not on your life!
